Elinor Donahue’s TV Journey: From ‘Father Knows Best’ to ‘Star Trek’
There is no question that Lucille Ball earned her crown as Queen of Classic TV, but could Elinor Donahue be considered TV's Princess? After all, in the 1950s she played Betty "Princess" Anderson on Father Knows Best. By the 1960s, she was part of The Andy Griffith Show , Many Happy Returns (nope, we didn't know that either) and Star Trek . In the 1970s she charmed audience in The Odd Couple and her career just kept climbing from there.
In this look back at our favorite parts she played, the retired Elinor Donahue, who was born April 19, 1937 in Tacoma, Washington (and even worked in vaudeville), shares her memories on nearly 40 years' worth of TV shows)
Elinor Donahue as Princess in 'Father Knows Best' (1954 to 1960)
CAST: Robert Young (James "Jim" Anderson, Sr.), Jane Wyatt (Margaret Anderson), Billy Gray (James "Bud" Anderson), Lauren Chapin (Kathy "Kitten" Anderson)
ELINOR PLAYS: Betty "Princess" Anderson
PREMISE: The quintessential family sitcom of the 1950s, chronicling the life of the Anderson family.
"I look back at Father Knows Best with great fondness. Fondness for the group of us. We were very, very close and really liked each other. Watching the show now brings, generally speaking, happy memories. I was very critical of myself when I was young, which is probably a reason I didn't watch the show. I made myself uncomfortable. Now I can be a little bit more forgiving.
"As to the show's ongoing appeal, I think it's the kindness and the sweetness that the people had toward one another. It has a warmth and an energy — a loving energy — to it that was very special. And the dialogue was never mean, always thoughtful. If anybody was mean spirited, I think it was Princess occasionally. She was always on a crusade of some sort, kind of huffy about everything."
WHERE TO Peacock TV , Pluto TV , Tubi
Ellie Walker on 'The Andy Griffith Show' (1960 to 1961)
CAST: Andy Griffith (Sheriff Andy Taylor), Ronny Howard (Opie Taylor), Don Knotts (Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife), Frances Bavier (Aunt Bee), Hal Smith (Otis Campbell), Howard McNear (Floyd Lawson), Jim Nabors (Gomer Pyle)
ELINOR PLAYED: Ellie Walker, Mayberry pharmacist and Andy Taylor's girlfriend in season 1.
PREMISE: Life in the town of the fictional Mayberry, North Carolina, with Sheriff Andy Taylor at the center.
"When I went from Father Knows Best to The Andy Griffith Show I felt like a bird out of a nest. I didn't feel like I had all my feathers yet and I didn't feel capable. It was the strangest feeling. I had a three-year contract for that show, but at the end of the first year I asked to be let out of my contract, because I didn't feel that I was playing the role properly. I just didn't feel right about it. In retrospect, and from things that people have said to me — very lovely things — I was doing okay. I was just not a happy camper and there was no point in my trying to continue with it."
WHERE TO Paramount+
Joan Randall on 'Many Happy Returns' (1964 to 1965)
CAST: John McGiver (Walter Burnley), Mark Goddard (Bob Randall), Andrea Sacino (Laurie Randall)
ELINOR PLAYS: Joan Randall, daughter to Walter, wife to Mark and mother to Laurie.
PREMISE: The work and home life of Walter Burnley, the manager of the Adjustments and Refunds Department at the fictitious LA department store, Krockmeyer's.
"That show came to me through friends of my husband, Harry Ackerman. We married in 1961 and had our first son together in 1962 and I was retired, which is what I wanted. But Many Happy Returns sounded ideal, because it was a recurring role, which meant that I would not have have to work all the time. But what happened more than once was that I would think I had the week off and would plan things with my my son, Brian, and would get a call on Monday morning, saying, 'Oh, we had to switch scripts, so we need you at 2:00 for a read through' and everything would get thrown off. Well, as fate would have it, I got pregnant again and was able to use the pregnancy to leave the show."
Commodore Nancy Hedford 'Star Trek: Metamorphosis' (1967)
CAST: William Shatner (Captain James T. Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy)
ELINOR PLAYED: Commodore Nancy Hedford
PREMISE: While returning to the starship Enterprise aboard the shuttlecraft, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the seriously ill Federation diplomat, Ambassador Nancy Helford, find themselves kidnapped by a sentient energy cloud and brought to a planet. Her life is ultimately saved by joining with that cloud. Yes, it's only one episode, but, given that it's the original Star Trek, it has certainly endured.
"When we filmed it, obviously we didn't know it would go on the way it has, but Star Trek certainly became a phenomenon very early on. You could see that it was going to have legs for a long time, because they would have those Star Trek conventions throughout the '70s. I was usually invited, but I never wanted to go, because I thought, 'Well, gee, I was only in the one episode. That doesn't seem right.'
"But I did go to a Las Vegas convention for the show's 50th anniversary. That was quite wonderful and quite fun. What I thought was funny is that when I was there, someone asked if I felt it was strange that Ambassador Hedford would be serving coffee to the men. I told her it didn't seem strange to me at all. In this day and age, I guess you wouldn't have a female character serving if you're a big muckity-muck in whatever service it is. But doing coffee service for someone in those days was fine."
WHERE TO Paramount+
Miriam Welby on 'The Odd Couple' (1972-1975)
CAST: Tony Randall (Felix Unger), Jack Klugman (Oscar Madison)
ELINOR PLAYS: Miriam Welby (her last name in tribute to her Father Know Best father, Robert Young's, next series, Marcus Welby, M.D.), Felix's girlfriend in 17 episodes.
PREMISE: Can two divorced men, one neat and one a slob, share an apartment without driving each other crazy? Of course not!
"I loved both the guys and everybody on that show, although Tony Randall could be a little prickly. I was just supposed to do one episode and I was supposed to be a blind date for him. We meet at a restaurant and we were doing a dress rehearsal — and bear in mind, I always get particularly nervous at dress rehearsals — and I couldn't remember my lines. He got very upset and he started pounding on the table, saying, 'Say your line! Say your line!' And Jack Klugman said, 'Tony, relax! Calm down; you're scaring her.' At that point I couldn't have told you my name, I was so scared.
WHERE TO Pluto TV
"The next day when we came in to do the full on taping, in my dressing room was a bouquet. Not a large bouquet, but a pretty, very sweet, beautiful bouquet from Tony apologizing and thanking me for being on the show. It was the sweetest thing, and from that time on he was just as nice to me as he could possibly be. Jack was a doll. We just had a wonderful, wonderful time together. Jack and Tony could make anything funny; they were perfectly matched for their characters."
Jane Mulligan on 'Mulligan's Stew' (1977)
CAST: Lawrence Pressman (Michael Mulligan), Johnny Doran (Mark Mulligan), Julie Anne Haddock (Melinda Mulligan), K.C. Martel (Jimmy Mulligan), Lory Koccheim (Polaris "Polly" Freedman), Suzanne Crough (Stevie Freedman), Chris Ciampa (Adam "Moose" Freedman), Sunshine Lee (Kimmy Nguyen Freedman)
ELINOR PLAYS: Jane Mulligan, wife to Michael, mother to Mark, Melinda and Jimmy; aunt to Polly, Stevie, Moose and Kimmy.
PREMISE: Comedy-drama focused on the Mulligan family, consisting of Michael and Jane Mulligan, parents of three, who, while in the midst of adopting a Vietnamese daughter, take in their nephew and two nieces when their two parents die in a plane crash.
"Joanna Lee, a very talented woman who had been an actress herself and a very good writer, probably a better writer than an executive to a certain extent, and I'm not meaning to be critical — her forte was writing — told me the story that she was writing up to the last minute we were filming. And if there was a mistake made, I would have to fault the network only in that when they did the two-hour movie, they did it in the summer and aired it in August. Joanna had hoped that it would be a mid-season replacement series, which would give her time to write all the scripts. Well, the movie went on the air, had huge ratings and they announced the series for the fall and she didn't have any time to write. So she was writing right up to the day that we shot; the shows were literally being cut and shipped overnight to the network and she was just going crazy.
"We knew there were problems, but I liked the scripts and I think the show would've worked, but it wasn't garnering the audience that they had hoped, so they canceled us after only four episodes aired. The show got better as it went on, but they really were having problems with her and they pulled the plug."
Carol Lambert on 'Please Stand By' (1979)
CAST: Richard Schaal (Frank Lampert), Darian Mathias (Susan Lampert), Stephen Schwartz (David Lampert), Bryan Scott (Rocky Lampert), Tom Logan (Announcer)
ELINOR PLAYS: Carol Lambert, wife of Frank and mother to Susan, David and Rocky.
PREMISE: After a couple purchases the smallest television station in the country, they start running it out of their New Mexico garage with the assistance of their kids and a local Sioux Indian.
"By the time I got involved with Please Stand By, it had already been sold into syndication and I was replacing someone, I don't know who, and it was for 22 episodes. The fact that it was 22 episodes guaranteed, I said I'd do it. I'd had it with the network pulling the plug all the time, so as long as I had a little security. And I had a really good time. It was cute, it was fluff and I had a perfectly lovely year, but I don't know whatever happened to it."
Susan Baxter on 'The New Adventures of Beans Baxter' (1987)
CAST: Jonathan Ward (Beans Baxter), Rick Lenz (Benjamin Baxter, Sr.), Scott Bremner (Scott "Scooter" Baxter)
ELINOR PLAYED: Susan Baxter, mother to Beans
PREMISE: In a nutshell, it's about the spy adventures of the teenage title character, with Susan Baxter very much in a supporting role.
"Getting the part was fun, though I can't say that about most audition processes. I don't like them much and I'm not good at them. but for this one, I signed all the contracts, I went in, did the scenes and left, because you never want to see the other people auditioning for the part. Well, it turned out I was the only one brought in, which was a nice honor. Barry Diller [then the head of Fox] was a fan of mine and he was the one that said, 'Okay, that's her.'"
CAST: Chris Elliot (Chris Peterson), Bob Elliot (Fred Peterson)
ELINOR PLAYED: Gladys Peterson, Chris' mother and Fred's wife
PREMISE: Thirty-years-old, Chris Peterson still lives with his parents, works as a newspaper delivery "boy," has no driver's license and is the epitome of a man-child. Stupid may be too cruel a word to use to describe him, but if the stoopid fits....
"I was given the script very quickly, because they were starting the next day with the reading for the network. I mean, it had to be cast right then and there, and the casting director said, 'This character is the mother of a newspaper boy and he lives at home.' 'Sure, fine.' Now one of my sons had delivered newspapers from the age of 11 to about 13, so I had that in my head. I'm visualizing that in front and I'm reading with that in mind in the office with the producers, one of whom was Chris Elliott. When I got home I was told I got the part and I should come in the next day to read with the whole cast in front of the network.
"When I found out the son was not 11, but was 30, I thought it was terrific. Hilarious. I still had a boy at home who was pushing 20, I think, at the time, and when I told him what the premise was, he said, 'I'm out of here,' and he moved out! And the character Chris played was such a doofus and it was all very surreal. And Papa and I never got out of our pajamas and slippers — I don't quite know why. It helped with the character somehow to be a little bit bizarre. You don't have to remark on it or say anything about it, you just go on about your business."
This story was originally published September 18, 2024, 5:00 PM.
